Dark Mirror
by Illmantrim-the-Wanderer
Summary: Across Time Two Boys Find dark Paths
1. The Secret Death of Tom Riddle

Title: Dark Mirror_1_The Secret Death of Tom Riddle  
  
Challenge:Two Lines challenge of Musefool  
  
Character(s): Tom Riddle and lots of redshirt extras  
  
Rating: R  
  
Words: 888  
  
'Verse: Harry Potter Verse, when Tom Riddle was a student  
  
***  
  
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud  
  
But nobody seems to hear him, or the sound he appears to make  
  
"Fool on the Hill" - the Beatles  
  
***  
  
Tom studiously read on, his eyes moving swiftly along the pages. Feeling a twitch in his neck, he glanced at the clock and was startled to see that several hours had passed since he had picked up the book. He made himself stretch and look around for a moment, noting the dimming light coming in from the windows. He hadn't eaten for a number of hours but he didnt feel hungry, so he shrugged it off.   
  
He was curled up in a couch in his father's suite at a chalet somewhere in Italy. He had come here for the summer break from Hogwarts, and had some fun before settling down to study. His father was off on some business meeting, as usual. He felt himself tired but somehow electrified. He had been raiding his father's old library and had come upon this book in an unopened crate obviously bought sight unseen. He had been fascinated by what seemed to be a study of the ancient arts of dark and light magic.  
  
He turned a page and there found a spell that seemed to draw him like a Gravitus spell. He found himself reading the spell at first quietly then aloud. For a moment, he faltered, some small part of his mind trying to warn that something was very wrong here. But the call of the knowledge and the song of the spell was too much and he began to read again, his voice rising in strength and power as he concentrated.   
  
Magic seemed to coil and twang around him , a discordant hash of a chord, and suddenly there was a shuddering and shaking around him. The world seemed to slide sideways and collapse against the walls and everything went black.  
  
He awoke to screams and moans, and he rose, shakily sloughing off some debris that had fallen on him, his head aching from a thankfully glancing blow from some falling object. He stumbled out of the ruins of the chalet and stared in horror at what he saw. Before him there was utter devastation. Devastation he had caused.   
  
The valley, once covered with sweet white snow, was now tinged black and orange as rocks and pieces of black mountainside had fallen amongst the chalets and magma had roared out of cracks, now cooled but laying over entire areas. He heard wailing and crying all around him as the wounded and dying cried out, but even as he listened, he began to hear another noise a whispering in his mind.   
  
Whispers which mounted higher and louder as voices began to crowd in his mind.  
  
...what's happening...  
  
...where's my son...  
  
...am i dead? is this death...  
  
...where's that egg i ordered someone is going to pay if I dont get it...  
  
...the sun looks wrong, how can the sun look wrong...  
  
...something weird is happening...  
  
...Marvin! Marvin, where are you...  
  
...has anyone seen my children...  
  
...get up you, damn old body never listens to me anymore...   
  
Even the darkness seemed to have a voice, seductive and dark and quiet but another voice nonetheless. The voices crowded and mounted in his head and suddenly seemed to notice him and see him for what he was and the tone of them changed and grew more horrible, as he sank to his knees screaming for them to stop.  
  
Murderer!  
  
killer of all my dreams!  
  
you tore us apart!  
  
killer!  
  
destroyer!  
  
chaos-bringer!  
  
look what you did!  
  
He screamed and ran blindly into the night, his mind fracturing as a thousand dead bodies mocked him, their voices taken up residence in his mind, screaming, cajoling, arguing. Their screams seemed to drown out his own as he sank into his own darkness, falling to his knees again, whining under his breath, no sound coming out as he stared at nothing...  
  
* * *  
  
The healer turned away shaking his head sadly.   
  
"I dont know what's wrong with that one. he seems to have taken all those deaths rather badly, and it has driven him beyond insane. He wont talk audibly but sometimes he seems desperate to say something but nothing comes out."  
  
"He was such a quiet boy, so kind, perhaps his sensitivity would not take such a blow."  
  
"whatever happenned, he deserves the best we can give him, and hopefully he will come out of it someday."  
  
* * *  
  
Somewhere in the darkness of the screams, the man who had been Tom had started to build a house of red bricks. The screamers were visible here and if he hit them hard enough their scream stopped and they melted down to redness, he made the bricks and within that place he felt normal, within that small place he felt more than normal, he felt powerful. The darkness had told him how to build the hut and he smiled ondly at the darkness of his mind. In his hut there was a twisted mirror and when he looked there his name shifted and twisted. Tom was no more. he watched as his name twisted and he smiled a sick crooked smile. All he had to do was kill all the screamers, kill all the souls that plagued him and he would have their power, their screams would end, and he could wake up. he smiled the crooked smile and kept building.   
  
* * *  
  
No one ever heard a word Tom said again, but one day, Voldemort woke up... And his perfectly loud voice was heard all over the world... 


	2. The Tempting of Ron Weasley

Title: Dark Mirror_2_The Tempting of Ron Weasley  
  
Challenge:Two Lines challenge of Musefool  
  
Character(s): Ron Weasley  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Words: 496  
  
'Verse: Harry Potter Verse, Fifth year of the books  
  
***  
  
"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls   
  
And tenement halls."  
  
"The Sound of Silence" - Simon and Garfunkel  
  
***  
  
By His fifth year, Ron was feeling it. Even though he knew that wasn't what was going on, he still felt it. He was known as Harry Potter's Sidekick. Doomed to be forever in the shadow of his best friend, the Boy Who Lived. He didnt mind being in the shadows but he minded that noone seemed to notice anything he did or wanted to be near him for any reason other than to get near Harry.  
  
So he did his best not to mind the looks and the words whispered behind his back and the insults thrown so casually in his direction. He heard it all and the prophecies and the graphitti even, and some took it seriously now but at first it was like that song, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls , And tenement halls.". Now people followed Harry's moves and words. And of course here he was trudging along alone as usual.  
  
Noone wanted to hear or see anything in Harry except celebrity, and he and Hermione had stood beside Harry in that first adventure. He shook his head. He felt bad for Harry sometimes, even when he hated him a little. And in truth, he really didnt mind that Harry was the focus of Hermione's attention, and Cho's and... well a lot of girls'  
  
He found himself trudging along thinking dark half-thoughts as the sunlight flickered and faded from the landscape about Hogwarts. Full night fell and he paused on the quad area and noticed a slight glowing from a section of the wall he had never visited before. there, outlined by faint lines, was a door. he hesitantly touched it and it swung open slowly.   
  
He stepped inside and found himself in a small room. at his feet there was a small plaque: do not enter and read, on pain of loss, and endings. Around him, the room seemed to echo with meaning and with malice. he looked back and found the door was gone.   
  
As he stepped forward, small creepers slowly shot up, then faster and wrapped around his arms and legs, carrying him down the hall an depositing him in a chair before he had the time to flee. And there he found two books. First was the Librarium Consortium, a tome of consorting with demons. The second was a spellbook, hand transcribed by... and Ron drew in a breath as he recognized the name...Tom Riddle, who eventually became Valdemort. At first he thought to take the book back to McGonagal; or Harry... but even thinking of his friend caused his stomach to knot. This was his!   
  
His hands were unconsciously stroking the book softly...feeling it's ancient but well preserved leather cover. The two books felt like... power and fame under Ron's hands... he thought for a moment of how he should take them awa... and the thought never completed itself. Instead he opened the Spell book by Tom Riddle and began to read.  
  
* * * 


End file.
